


deadwater

by rojohbi



Category: Oxenfree
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-09-28 17:12:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10140989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rojohbi/pseuds/rojohbi
Summary: Like sand in her throat, Alex laughs at the geometric monstrosity flickering above them in the cavern. She doesn’t even remember getting here. The beginning, when everything seemed normal, was routine. She takes these first steps without thinking of them, and she’s done it so many times she can almost see her footsteps in the damp sand in front of her, like a phantom trail.“Y’know, funny thing,” she grits out, nails pressing bloody half-moons into her palms. “I don’t think it is.”And it starts all over again.





	1. boy with a coin, girl with a bird

**Author's Note:**

> ive played this game at least like. 6 times through now
> 
> also, semi-graphic depictions of drowning in this chapter! please make sure you're comfortable with that because it sets up the entire story
> 
> this is also unbeta'd so just let me know if theres any mistakes
> 
> this is based off of [wet by deadwater](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV7ufuW0VFY&index=38&list=PLnpcRDyhovfo826663TyvB1lehGVxeW8X) aaaand an honorable mention to the runner up and what i listened to on repeat while writing, [boy with a coin by iron and wine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDfM1byYLyY)

After so many loops, Alex knows the second it happens. It resets, and she can feel her walk-weary feet settle into dirt-free sneakers on the ferry once again. It’s almost a comforting feeling, like she has Stockholm Syndrome for time itself. It wasn’t that she’d lost hope for ending the loops, for leaving the island. But she’d exhausted her options. There was probably a way, but she didn’t know what else to try. 

“Is. Leave. Possible.”

Like sand in her throat, Alex laughs at the geometric monstrosity flickering above them in the cavern. She doesn’t even remember getting here. The beginning, when everything seemed normal, was routine. She takes these first steps without thinking of them, and she’s done it so many times she can almost see her footsteps in the damp sand in front of her, like a phantom trail. 

“Y’know, funny thing,” she grits out, nails pressing bloody half-moons into her palms. “I don’t think it is.”

And it starts all over again.

 

\---------

 

As they went through the motions, Jonas seemed to stick a little closer than usual. He looked at her like there was something on the tip of his tongue. She tried not to encourage it - it would only hurt more if he remembered, because it would reset again and his mind wouldn’t come with hers through the static. It’d happened before. Not that he remembered much, but it still stung to be so close to not being alone anymore. 

Clarissa and Ren both came through the comm tower phone, and Alex dragged them to Fort Milner, knowing full well that Ren would be perfectly fine for another hour. It was routine, a step by step process where she knew each fork in the path didn’t really matter that much. She’d just do something different the next time, and someone would still get mad and someone would still get hurt, and she would still be choked by guilt. It didn’t matter which The walk was oddly quiet. Alex couldn’t remember all the conversations down to the word, since there were so many variables, but she knew it wasn’t supposed to be silent. 

“Alex.”

She jumped, looking back at Jonas in surprise. He looked a little sheepish, but a determined expression came over his face quickly as he seemed to steel himself for what he wanted to say.

“Sorry. But, uh, do you - okay, I know this’ll sound crazy but -”

“We’ve done this before,” she interrupted, and Jonas was the startled one that time, steps stuttering a bit. 

“Uh. Okay, that was easier than I thought. Is there a reason you aren’t, like, completely wigged out by this?” Alex snorted, looking over at him.

“‘Wigged out’, really?” Jonas shoved her with his shoulder, and she laughed, though the noise died out quickly. “I just, um. I’ve done this a lot of times. I’m usually the only one who remembers.”

Alex decided, rather quickly, that she didn’t like the prying look that came over his face. Jonas knew her a little too well for someone who’d met her that very night, and she wasn’t sure if it was their similarity or the loops pressing against the back of his mind.

“How many times is a lot?”

She breathed in, breathed out, trying to think of a way to make the answer less alarming. But - her hands shook, and so did her head without her permission, and Alex was suddenly tired of making it all sound like it was an average tree-size problem and not a cliffside she kept falling off of and then climbing up again only to fall, climb, fall, climb, fall, c-

“I lost count,” she blurted, sucking in something desperate and bitter. “I started counting once I remembered everything clearly enough to even try, and I think I hit the hundreds. But that was for-freaking-ever ago, so who knows! And I don’t even know how many times I did it before I realized that I was doing it, so it’s really a goddamn mystery.” She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t deal with whatever expression he had, and so she just folded into herself further and further until she’d stopped walking altogether and just sat on the gravel pathway like a child. “I just - I don’t know Jonas. A lot of times. I could have lived my life, like, six freaking times in the time that I’ve been living this night. And nothing fixes it.”

When she lifted her head Jonas wasn’t above her like she was expecting, but was slowly kneeling in front of her like he was approaching a startled animal. And, well - she sort of was, wasn’t she? She was shaking and half-curled into a ball, and she couldn’t remember when her eyes got wet but here she was, making her way to a sob in half-measures because she couldn’t even break down correctly. Jonas sat next to her on the ground, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, and Alex watched his flat expression be broken only by the terse working of his jaw.

“I bet the water is pretty cold, huh?”

Alex went rigid. Jonas hadn’t moved, still looking off in front of him, but his mouth was twisted in a half-smile. Like he was supposed to smile but couldn’t quite force himself to scrounge up something genuine. Alex couldn’t breathe, panic pressing against her chest, and suddenly the pressure was real and cold and enveloping her completely like a wave.

Her head burst above the surface with a gasp, and -

_“Just get in here with me and you’ll know, you big baby.” Alex laughed, shoving wet locks of brown from her face to see her brother still standing on the shore. The sky was a murky gray, telling of the oncoming storm. But they’d been coming here since they were little kids, and both knew how to swim like they knew how to walk. It wasn’t a worry, really - even the waves were still tame, which was the only worry they’d had. And besides, this was their last chance to have a day together, just them._

_Michael stuck his tongue out at her just before getting caught in his shirt as he tried to pull it off, ending up with both of them laughing uncontrollably as he struggled to get free. Neither of them were paying attention, and as Alex went to gasp in air she was thrust down, hard, water filling her mouth and lungs instead of air. She hadn’t seen the wave - and Michael hadn’t either, no time for warning or even bracing herself. She cracked her head against the rocky seafloor hard enough to send her eyes out of focus, and it was like there were two of her in her head, one crisp but shaking with panic while the other floated mindlessly, still reeling from the pain with water chilling her chest from the inside._

‘Alex, come on. Come on, wake up! Don’t let Michael come after you!’

_She needed to throw up. And breathe. Anything. Alex broke the surface long enough to gasp in air, a gurgling and unsettling noise that couldn’t possibly have been her but had to be, really, it had to be her. She felt stone hit her shoulder, hard, red starting to stain the clear blue of the water around her, and Alex surfaced only to vomit water and lunch all over the shore. Shaking from the cold, she would’ve taken a second to recover if not for the shouting that was twisting inside her head, a desperate plea repeating itself in her mind._

‘Alex. Get in the water. Get in the water. Go get Michael, get Michael, GET-’

_She got in the water._

_She got Michael._

_He was heavy, but she caught him when he was just conscious enough to not be deadweight, to help her push them back both to the shore and shove them onto wet sand coughing and gasping. Waterlogged but still breathing._

_Other Alex, back-of-her-head Alex, was silent. Still._

_And then they were both sobbing, grasping onto Michael with needy hands. She felt a lifetime of longing pulsing in her racing heart, something she didn’t understand the source of but couldn’t help the desperation of, like if she let go of her brother he would slip back into the ocean for good. Michael held her right back, laughing through the ocean in his lungs._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr at [rojohbi](http://www.rojohbi.tumblr.com)


	2. i'm dreaming, you're depleted, guess the meaning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The red stain to her vision was either a remnant of the red sea she’d been floating in, or it was a remnant of her prior possession. Or both. This was getting to be overkill, really.
> 
> Ha ha. Overkill. She was just hilarious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my first real multichaptered story, so sorry that the chapters are pretty short. im still working my chops right now
> 
> im putting a tentative guess of 6 chapters on this but i have no idea so. stay tuned
> 
> this is unbetad so just let me know if there's any mistakes!!
> 
> song title and listening recommendation is [this version of ghosts by the 1975](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti1boKf6ZdM)

_“This is cheating, Alex. Not t-the game we agreed. Agreed on.” The halting layers of voices filled her ears, the arrhythmic staccato moving through her mind and down into her chest, spreading through her limp limbs like she was suspended in a benevolent ocean. Alex tried to breathe, reply, anything, but when she opened her eyes it was just dead water, an angry crimson tone drifting and staining the world around her. The sun filtering through the surface made it seem to glow with a bloody, pulsing visage._

_“Oh, Alex. Alex. Al - Didn’t we tell you that you can’t leave? You can’t leave us.” Her lungs were starting to burn, but Alex still couldn’t breathe or move. Just left to panic with bloody sunlight glinting in her squinted eyes, panic roiling in her chest but body lax with something that felt final and dark. She could remember saving Michael, gasping and laughing on the shore with what should have been a familiar corpse but was really her brother. Still her brother. Breathing in and coughing out sea water every couple moments but - Michael._

_If Michael was alive here, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to take his place in the past._

_“ALEX. You can-n’t leave us. Sleep. Sleepy time gal. Did you think getting out would be so. So. SO. So. Easy?”_

 

 

\------

 

 

Alex woke up sobbing and shaking, but only one of them seemed to actually be her fault. The red stain to her vision was either a remnant of the red sea she’d been floating in, or it was a remnant of her prior possession. Or both. This was getting to be overkill, really.

Ha ha. Overkill. She was just _hilarious_.

“Jonas, you can stop shaking me now.” Alex let out a grunt as Jonas dropped her flat on the ground in his surprise, the phantom pain of the rocky shore and her aching lungs searing back with sudden reality.

“Sorry, sorry. Are you, like, back now? Are you okay? You were doing a great imitation of a safety flare for a while there.” He looked concerned, and Alex sat up slowly, scrubbing at her tear-stained face with a rather pathetic sniffle. She was still processing what exactly she’d changed this time - was Michael alive? She’d kept him from drowning, but that’d never happened before. She’d never been put back on the shore, never been given a chance to drag him to safety before. This was uncharted territory. It wasn’t a choice she ever remembered having, but it wasn’t like it was one she’d forget about. Shit, she’d have been trying it since the beginning if she’d know it was there to try. And what had the little drowning act meant? Was that punishment for meddling? Was that limbo? She felt a little sick, but that might’ve just been the residual feeling of choking down half the damn ocean.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Alex sat up slowly, fingers brushing over the back of her head. She was expecting to feel something wet, be it saltwater or blood, but it was just her limp ponytail and the brush of hair fried from excessive coloring. Seeing nothing on her trembling fingers but the slight smear of dirt and sweat was reasonably unsettling, and Alex let her eyes slip shut and focused on breathing just to ignore the rippling uncertainty. “Just getting really tired of all this time loop nonsense. I, uh, saw Michael again.”

Jonas’ brow rose, and he leaned forward in interest, putting him close enough to her that she could smell cigarettes on his breath. There was also cinammon. He must’ve had mints on him. It was magic to her, the way they covered the taste and feel of salt that seemed to coat her body inside and out. “Michael, that’s- that’s your brother, right? You _saw_ him?”

“Yeah, I - sometimes, we seem to be able to, like, go back. Change the past. Jonas, I kept Michael from _drowning_.”

“Uh,” he said eloquently, settling back on his heels as he took that in. “Wow, okay, that’s. Wow. Holy shit.”

“Yeah, holy shit is right.” Alex took a deep breath in, almost able to feel the rattle of every little part inside of her that wasn’t sitting quite right. Temporal shenanigans were, if she had to guess, not great for her feng shui. “Can I actually get one of those cigarettes now? If I have to keep tasting salt for the rest of the night I think I might hurl.”

“Please don’t hurl,” he politely requested with a small chuckle, handing her a cigarette. Jonas lit it for her, ever full of tact - she’d have needed him to anyways, the way her fingers shook, and he seemed to notice and saved her the embarrassment. She inhaled her gratitude, the salty grit of her mouth washed over with something both earthy and ashey. A cough built in her throat, but she swallowed it down hard, less out of dignity and more out of sheer bullheadedness. Of course she’d had cigarettes before, she was a high schooler, but Michael would’ve killed her if she’d done it regularly so she avoided it on principle. Alex could understand an addiction to these things - if she carried her hurt on her shoulders to the extent that Jonas did, she’d be inhaling her way to temporary ignorance, too.

There was silence between them for a while, as Jonas lit a cigarette for himself and they contemplated their burdens side-by-side. She stubbed hers out on the gravel when she finished, and Jonas made no protest when she took another, lighting it herself with a warped sense of pride on the matter. Alex had literally no idea what was going on - she just wanted to go home. She wanted to break herself out of this loop and see if her brother was alive, if she was gone, if the warning was one of desperation because the Sunken knew that she’d changed the game.

“Y’know what I think about missing the most? Other than my mom and my bed, obviously.”

Jonas laughed, the sudden break in their silence comfortable. “Obviously. What do you miss, Als?” She hid her wince at the nickname with a pull from the cigarette, exhaling up into the sky with a wistfulness she hadn’t let herself feel in what was surely a lifetime.

“Jonas. Jonas, my good pal. I miss coffee so freaking badly.”

There was a pause when they just looked at each other, Alex’s head still angled towards the sky and Jonas just staring at her with something like awe, and then they were laughing. Big, breathless, uncontrollable laughing that left you empty of air but full of something even lighter. Something light enough that it might carry the both of them to the end of this road one more time, just to see if the game had finally changed.

Let it never be said that Alex was a complete pessimist. She knew how to keep going, and maybe that’s why she couldn’t stop - if you know you can take another step, you can’t justify not taking it.

Not here.

When the laughter had died down, and the pair was left alone with their bursting chests and watering eyes, Jonas stubbed out his cigarette and stood. He held a hand out to her and Alex looked from his outstretched fingers to his face, his smile crooked and content and making her feel inexplicably fond. “C’mon, Doc Brown. Let’s go save Clarissa’s ass.”

Snickering, Alex took his hand, letting him pull her up to stand. He swung an arm around her shoulders, and Alex let hers wrap around his middle as they took to the path together, intertwined and ready for the batshit fun house that was Fort Milner. “Why am I Doc Brown? Furthermore, I really feel like we’re more Rick and Morty than we are Doc and Marty, y’know?”

“Then you’re definitely Rick.”

“Stop making me the old men!”

“Well, if you’d stop jumping around time, maybe I would.”

“Asshole.”

“Why thank you.”

The only reason she didn’t trip him was because he’d bring her down with her. But if she had, and he had, she wasn’t too good to admit she wouldn’t mind too terribly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rick and morty definitely did not exist in their lifetime but i dont. i just dont care. these two would love that damn show
> 
> find me on tumblr at [rojohbi](http://www.rojohbi.tumblr.com)


End file.
